Bahmni

Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) and EMR software for low-resource settings.

Past and Current Partners

Digital Square, Thoughtworks, DPG Alliance.

Active Countries

Over 50 countries

Thematic area(s)

Health

Technology

Open Source, Whitelabel, SaaS, Digital Public Good.

Organisation Name

The Bahmni Coalition

The Problem

The main problems that Bahmni seeks to address are; Missing or incomplete patient health history due to paper records, Lack of integration across systems, Leverage available technical capacity, Difficult to use systems that get in the way rather than support healthcare providers, Digital Health Equity and many others. Bahmni target market is LMIC and LDC and is used in more than 50 countries.

The Solution

Bahmni has created an open source Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software for low-resource settings. Bahmni wants to provide a high-quality, free, open source solution that is comparable to the best tools available in high income countries.

How it works?

Step 1: An implementation partner facilitates discussions to understand the institution's requirements. Based on this, they provide an initial proposal with cost and time estimates.
Step 2: The institution's selects an implementation partner based on the proposals considering cost and any value-added services. An implementation plan is finalized with a pricing quote for the project.
Step 3: Implementation partners arrange the necessary infrastructure facilities such as hardware (both end-user and server) and networking. The coalition partners configure Bahmni based on the requirements identified. Custom forms and data sets needed to support the workflow at the institution are configured. Acceptance tests are conducted with a smaller set of users to get feedback and tweak the system according to needs.
Step 4: Implementation partners provide end-user training to various groups of users such as clinicians, nursing staff, front-office staff and administrators. Roll-out is typically phased by department or location. Users start using the system.
Step 5: The institution typically engages either the implementation partner or a different local partner to help them with any ongoing hardware/software issues and to continue to adapt the system for use. If there are in-house staff responsible for maintaining the system, they use the Bahmni community channels or discussion forums to seek support.

Bridging the digital divide

Bahmni was specifically designed to work in low-connectivity settings. It can be easily installed on-premise and supported without the need for software development skills. Bahmni is highly configurable and supports many different features without the need for technical expertise. Using the Bahmni Connect mobile app, users have the possibility to do offline work and sync data back to a central server.

Impact and highlights

As of 2019, Bahmni has been used in over 500 sites in over 50 countries. During that same time period, 2M+ patient records have been created in Bahmni by over 4,000 users.

Plans for expansion

Currently working with India's National Health Authority (NHA) to create a lightweight version of Bahmni for use in small clinics and hospitals. This new version called Bahmni Lite for Clinics will be offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) and aims to be an affordable solution that providers can easily adopt. This model and product can be expanded to other Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs).

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